Category: Social Issues
The 70 job losses announced last week by KiwiRail in Dunedin and Wellington, and the 41 from Yarrows bakery in South Taranaki are reminders of how difficult business conditions are in New Zealand at the present time. Herald reporter Simon Collins spelt it out in a story on Saturday that outlined the problems faced in Northland - the region with the country’s highest rate of unemployment. At 9.8 percent at the end of the March quarter, Northland’s unemployment rate is almost 2 percentage points above the next-highest regions of Auckland and Gisborne/Hawkes Bay. With unemployment amongst young people aged 18 to 24 running at 29 percent and amongst Maori at 48 percent, more than half of all young Maori in Northland are on welfare.[1]
The recent Budget raised the question: What should we be doing to grow the economy? Its focus on reducing government debt and spending was positive, most said, and essential for getting our finances on a firmer footing to head off future problems with overseas creditors and consequential interest rate rises. But beyond that, many felt it did not contain much direction for strategic change.
With the financial crisis forcing governments around the world to tighten their belts the call for welfare reform is growing stronger. Welfare becomes a serious problem for society when it impacts on family structure and functioning, creating incentives for family breakdown and intergenerational dependency.
One of the problems of being a doctor in New Zealand is being asked to sign documents that are untrue for the benefit of patients or patient’s parents. I wrote to the Minister of Social Development twice after I had a confrontation with a patient’s parent
It is disappointing that two government initiatives announced over the last week aimed at reducing New Zealand’s appalling rate of child abuse, appear more focussed on criminalising law-abiding citizens than changing those government policies that are at the heart of the child abuse crisis. The first is a change to the Crimes Act, being promoted by the Minister of Justice Simon Power, that will criminalise people associated with families with at-risk children if they don’t report their concerns to authorities.[1] The second is a longer term Green Paper project, led by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, that will look at the introduction of 'mandatory reporting', whereby teachers, doctors, and other professionals associated with children will be criminalised if they fail to alert authorities to suspected ill-treatment.[2]
Highly sexist, intellectually eclectic, and champion of numerous public health campaigns, the founder of Plunket, Sir Frederic Truby King is a difficult customer for the modern mind to understand. But some coherence can be brought to bear to King’s mercurial career when seen in the light of the influence of the British libertarian philosopher, Herbert Spencer.
With the general election now less than 12 months away it is time to reflect on whether the National Government has lived up to expectations in the first two years of its term.
In the late 19th century, New Zealand gained a reputation as the ‘social laboratory of the world’. This was largely as a result of our adoption in 1898 of a pay-as-you-go pension scheme, which was in sharp contrast to the insurance-based contributory scheme introduced almost a decade earlier by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
One of the most volatile pieces of law in our society is up for review again. The public has till 29th of October to make submissions on the review of child support led by Revenue Minister Peter Dunne.
The rescue of the 33 Chilean miners, trapped half a mile underground for almost ten weeks, has been a remarkable story of human innovation and progress. In another age, they would have all died. But technology and international cooperation banded together to create an inspirational feat of recovery, which some have called a ‘smashing victory for free-market capitalism’.[1]
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